Agha Shahid Ali - Northampton, MA - Dead Poets' Society Memorials on Waymarking.com

The grave of Kahmiri-American poet Agha Shahid Ali is marked by a gray granite marker set on a black granite base. The grave marker is inscribed:

The top of the black granite base is inscribed, in white lettering, with the last couplet from the ghazals found in his book The Country Without a Post Office.:

A ground level marker at the foot of the grave is inscribed:

Agha Shahid Ali was born on February 4, 1949 in Srinagar, India and spent his youth in Kashmir. He emigrated to the United States in 1976. He was awarded a Ph.D. in English from Pennsylvania State University in 1984, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona in 1985. He taught at nine universities and colleges in India and the United States.

His poetry was published in collections in many of books including: A Walk Through the Yellow Pages, The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office, In Memory of Begum Akhtar, Rooms Are Never Finished, The Rebel's Silhouette, Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English, and Call Me Ishmael Tonight. His book of poetry Rooms Are Never Finished was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award.

Agha Shahid Ali died of brain cancer on December 8, 2001 at 52 years of age.

From The Country Without a Post Office:

The only language of loss left in the world is Arabic-
These words were said to me in a language not Arabic.

Ancestors, you've left me a plot in the family graveyard-
Why must I look, in your eyes, for prayers in Arabic?

Majnoon, his clothes ripped, still weeps for his Laila.
O, this is the madness of the desert, his crazy Arabic.

Who listens to Ishmael? Even now he cries out:
Abraham, throw away your knives, recite a psalm in Arabic.

From exile Mahmoud Darwish writes to the world:
You'll all pass between the fleeting words of Arabic.

At an exhibition of miniatures, such delicate calligraphy:
Kashmiri paisley tied into the golden hair of Arabic!

The Koran prophesied a fire of men and stones.
Well, it's all now come true, as it was said in the Arabic.

When Lorca died, they left the balconies open and saw
his gasidas braided, on the horizon, into knots of Arabic.

Memory is no longer confused, it has a homeland-
Says Shammas: Territorialize each confusion in a graceful Arabic.

Where there were homes in Deir Yassin, you'll see dense forests-
That village was razed. There's no sign of Arabic.

I too, O Amichai, saw the dresses of beautiful women.
And everything else, just like you, in Death, Hebrew, and Arabic.

They ask me to tell them what Shahid means-
Listen: It means "The Beloved" in Persian, "Witness" in Arabic.